Kerry Sets Stage for Pakistan Reset

Visit Will Provide Chance to Recast Relationship With Less Engagement, Rancor

By

Saeed Shah

July 30, 2013 12:05 a.m. ET

ISLAMABAD—U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is expected to travel to Pakistan this week in his first visit since the country's new government came to power, in what officials cautiously characterized as warming in one of the U.S.'s thorniest foreign relationships.

Mr. Kerry's trip, the highest-level engagement between Washington and Islamabad since Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's election in May, comes as the U.S. prepares to withdraw combat troops from neighboring Afghanistan. It provides an opportunity, U.S. and...